Garden Street Church, New York City

The Reformed Dutch Church began to erect a new temple, in 1691, on Garden Street (now Exchange Place). The bell was cast in 1674. The Garden Street Church opened for divine service in 1693, before it was thoroughly finished. The society was known as the Garden Street Church.

In 1696, the Church was incorporated under a charter granted by King William III of England as Collegiate Church.

Note on the street name: During the Dutch rule, this street was known as "Tuyen Straat" (in modern Dutch Tuinstraat can be translated as Garden Street). It became Church Street in 1695, Garden Street in 1797 and Exchange Place in 1827.

DeWitt (reference above) wrote: «I find in a manuscript the following reference to the style of the building of the old church in Garden street. It was an oblong square, with three sides of an octagon on the east side [see illustration on the right]. In the front it had a brick steeple, on a large square foundation, so as to admit a room above the entry for a consistory room. The windows of the church were small panes of glass set in lead. The most of them had coats of arms of those who had been elders and magistrates, curiously burnt on glass by Gerard Duyckinck. Some painted coats of arms were also hung against the walls. This house continued the only house of worship for our Dutch ancestors, till the building of another at the corner of Nassau and Liberty streets [the Middle Dutch Reformed Church, 1729]. After the erection of the church in Nassau street, the church in Garden street took the name of the Old, and in Nassau street that of the New ; and when the church at the corner of Fulton and William was erected, it took the name of the north, when the Garden-Street Church was designated as the SOUTH, and the Nassau-Street as the MIDDLE. The terms old and new, however, continued to be applied to the two latter for a long time subsequent.»

In 1766 the temple was enlarged and repaired, but was not open for service.

In 1807, a new temple was erected on the same site and in 1812, the South Church was separated from the Collegiate Church. The second temple burned in the Great Fire of 1835 and the congregation built a new temple on Murray Street, where they remained until 1847.

The congregation moved to a Gothic revival temple on Fifth Avenue and 21st Street, completed about 1849. In 1890, the South Church sold this temple and purchased the former Zion Protestant Episcopal Church, a Gothic edifice built in 1854, located on Madison Avenue at 38th Street.

The congregation moved again to a new temple, constructed in 1909-1911 on Park Avenue and 85th Street. It was designed by Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson in French Gothic style.

In 1914, the South Reformed Dutch Church was dissolved and the remaining congregation merged with the First Union Presbyterian Church, which became known as the Park Avenue Presbyterian Church. In 1937, it merged with the Brick Presbyterian Church and the combined congregation worshiped in the old South Church building until 1940, when the current temple of the Brick Church on Park Avenue opened. In 1945, the temple was purchased by the Central Christian Church and was renamed Park Avenue Christian Church.